teacher competence

Teacher efficacy is an essential psychological variable which is linked to student achievement, motivation, and even student self-efficacy. Moreover, teachers' self-efficacy beliefs play an essential role in the context of reform initiatives by mediating any behavioral change. The relevant literature reports conflicting findings on the sources, however. Such being the case, the present study aimed at speculating on the sources of self-efficacy among Iranian EFL teachers who participated in this study. To this aim, individual interviews were conducted with 18 English language teachers teaching in middle schools up to the point when data saturation was achieved. Moreover, the participating teachers were asked to keep journals in order to keep a record of the significant experiences that captured their attention concerning their self-efficacy beliefs during one semester. The data were analyzed using grounded theory procedures in which open, axial, and selective coding were applied to extract the themes (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). The results of the study indicated that Bandura's (1997) four sources of self-efficacy information including mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and physiological/emotional states played a crucial role in forming Iranian EFL teachers' efficacy beliefs. In addition to these sources, "teacher competence" and “contextual factors” appeared as two other influential factors affecting Iranian EFL teachers’ efficacy beliefs.